My mission - shop locally!

(To all two of my loyal readers...I am so behind on this poor neglected blog. It's kind of been replaced by Facebook, but I'm going to make a more earnest effort to record things here again.)

I have been so disheartened by all the local businesses who have shut down in the past few months. On Sunday I was out running errands and I made a promise to shop locally whenever possible. I even went and returned a dog bed that I had purchased an hour earlier at Pet Food Express, and bought a slightly more expensive version at Animal Farm. My fear is that we will soon end up having to buy everything at a place like Target or Wal Mart.

Here are some of the places I used to frequent that are now closed. May you all rest in peace.

• Cotton and Company - the best place to fit little kids for shoes
• Codys Books - the anchor of 4th Street!
• Elephant Pharmacy - late night browsing, meeting place for my walks with Lindsey and Jennifer, the "Target" for the more conscientious shoppers
• Babystyle.com - the best place to get cute baby stuff from people's registries (so much more fun to shop than Babies R Us)
• Oh Baby Baby - cutest baby and little kid clothes, just up the street (not sure if they're closed yet)
• Cafe de la Paz - the service was mediocre but they had really good South American-inspired food
• Elmwood Pharmacy and Izzy's Soda Fountain - I hadn't been there in ages, but there was no place else where you could get a cough drops and a kick ass ice cream sundae in the same place

I have a mental watch list of the places I fear will close soon. So I'm making a special effort to go there more and bring my friends.